Data, culture change and mental health initiatives are helping to turn one of the world’s most physically intense sports into a benchmark for workplace safety
When your organisation’s core business is controlled contact, safety can’t sit on the sidelines. For New Zealand Rugby (NZR), that responsibility sits with Chief People, Safety and Wellbeing Officer, Toni Grimshaw, whose remit stretches from traditional people operations through to player welfare, medical governance and mental health across both the community game (with150,000 participants) and the professional game.
Grimshaw’s role spans people capability, payroll and organisational HR for NZR’s staff, while also overseeing the safety and welfare framework for players – from professional All Blacks to five‑year‑old “Small Blacks” at local clubs.
Her team leads medical requirements at elite fixtures – including head injury assessment (HIA) processes, oversight of team doctors and independent match‑day doctors – as well as the health and safety framework across the rugby system and, injury management for professional players.
From “play on” to “safety first”: a cultural reset
Grimshaw describes the dramatic cultural shift around concussion and head trauma. A decade ago, players were more likely to shrug off symptoms and continue. Today, higher reporting rates are seen as a positive indicator of changing norms, rather than increased risk.
“Players are more likely to disclose that they've had a head impact, and teammates are more likely to call it out and send them for assessment,” she explained.
Technology is reinforcing that behaviour change: instrumented mouthguards flag significant impacts and trigger immediate assessment, ensuring concussions that once went unnoticed are now captured and managed.
Compliance – through strict implementation of World Rugby’s HIA protocols – is only one side of the story. The other is culture: the old “tough it out” mentality is being replaced by a new narrative that playing on while concussed is letting the team down. You step off, follow a recovery plan and only return when it is safe to do so.
For HR leaders, it’s a powerful example of how policy, technology and cultural storytelling must align to shift deeply ingrained behaviours in high‑risk environments.
Evidence‑based safety in a high‑impact workplace
Rugby may be an extreme context, but Grimshaw’s approach is strikingly data‑driven in ways many corporate health and safety programs aspire to emulate. NZR partners with independent researchers and universities to track both the short‑ and long‑term health impacts of rugby, “both positive and where there’s risk.”
The narrative around concussion tends to dominate public debate, but internally, data highlights that shoulder and knee injuries are the most common. That evidence base directly shapes rule tweaks and coaching priorities, including work with World Rugby on tackle height, safe contact techniques and game regulations aimed at preventing and better managing injuries.
This continuous loop – research, regulation, education, and then back to research – is now a core part of NZR’s operating model. Safety isn’t a static policy set but a constantly iterating system.
Embedding psychosocial safety and mental health
Beyond physical injury, Grimshaw’s portfolio includes mental health and psychosocial risk management – areas that many HR leaders are only now being pushed to formalise. NZR operates a dedicated mental health and wellbeing team that works across its community game as well as elite levels.
With players, coaches and referees frequently travelling, often in isolating high‑pressure environments, NZR identifies them as higher‑risk groups and builds purposeful supports around them.
At community level, rugby is used as a vehicle to “lift some of the stigma” around mental health, with education programs embedded into clubs across the country.
For employers grappling with new psychosocial regulations, NZR’s model – recognising elevated‑risk cohorts, designing bespoke supports and normalising conversations – offers a practical blueprint that goes far beyond compliance.
Training the whole system, not just specialists
One of NZR’s most striking moves is how it treats safety as a shared capability across the entire rugby ecosystem. At the professional level, players receive regular safety and welfare training, while doctors working in rugby must hold sport‑specific accreditations for providing medical care in the code.
In the community game, every coach undergoes annual “RugbySmart” training, covering how injuries happen, how to identify them and how to respond. This system‑wide training approach has underpinned the cultural change Grimshaw described: when every touchpoint in the organisation is speaking the same language on safety, the norms start to hard‑wire.
For HR leaders, it raises a challenging question: is safety knowledge confined to specialists and e‑learning modules, or truly woven into every leader, coach and supervisor’s role?
High‑performance events, high‑reliability planning
Major fixtures such as test matches and international tours introduce additional complexity – more travel, more games, more risk. This year, NZR’s men’s programme includes a high‑stakes tour to South Africa followed by a Northern Hemisphere Nations Cup, with a World Cup to follow in 2027.
Behind the scenes, NZR’s test match, competitions and tournaments team runs military‑style planning, bringing together all parts of the rugby system involved in staging big events. From stadium set‑up and partner engagement to “all of your medical control,” detailed project planning ensures everyone knows their role and the resources required to operate safely.
Grimshaw sees this operational discipline as its own form of high performance – the off‑field equivalent of what happens on the pitch – and points to it as one of the highlights of working at NZR.
The HR lens: safety, performance and purpose
Despite the demanding nature of the work, Grimshaw says staff see it as a privilege to operate in a high‑performance environment with such visible impact, from elite tests down to grassroots clubs.
Her role illustrates how modern HR in high‑risk, high‑profile sectors is evolving: beyond compliance and traditional people operations into integrated oversight of physical safety, mental health, culture and event execution. For HR leaders in any industry, NZR’s example underscores three key lessons:
- Safety strategy must be evidence‑based and continuously updated
- Culture change is as critical as protocols in managing high‑risk work
- Psychosocial safety and mental health need the same systematic, resourced attention as physical hazards
In other words, the future of HR in safety‑critical organisations may look a lot like Grimshaw’s portfolio – sitting at the intersection of people, performance and wellbeing, with the courage to rewrite the playbook when the game changes.
